RICHLAND, Wash. – At the Plutonium Finishing Plant on the Hanford Site, crews with EM contractor CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company are in the process of removing the last of the gloveboxes from the facility before demolition begins. Safety is paramount as crews remove the large pieces of plutonium processing equipment — the glovebox pictured above is 15 feet long, about 2 feet wide, more than 6 feet tall, and weighs more than a ton. Removal of the gloveboxes, iconic symbols of the core mission at Hanford from the Manhattan Project through the Cold War, continues to represent significant progress on the project, one of the most challenging in the EM complex. These gloveboxes are too large to be removed from the building through normal doors, so crews enlarged some preexisting doors leading to a crane. Waste containers are then shipped offsite for size reduction and returned to Hanford for eventual shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. Other gloveboxes, already cleaned and prepared for removal, will remain in the building and protected from demolition debris until their removal during demolition.